CARTOONS, DOLLS, AND MOSQUITOES

Have you ever misunderstood something someone said? Have you ever thought you knew something only to find out later that the mental concept you had of it was quite different from the way it actually was? It happens to all of us, especially when we are young.

As you may or may not know, my sister and I lived with our grandmother from the time I was three and she was two. I remember a time in those early years when our grandmother got really sick. I don’t know what was wrong with her, but she was sick enough that she couldn’t take care of us. She couldn’t take care of herself either, so we went to our aunt’s house so she could take care of her. Maybe she had something contagious because they sent us to stay with our mom and dad until she got well. I don’t remember how long we stayed there but it was quite an adventure. I’ll write more about it later, but for this post, I want to focus on just one thing from that time.

They only had one bedroom, so when it was bedtime they slid two recliners together facing each other in the living room, next to our younger sister’s crib, and that was where we slept while we were there. We slept with our grandmother at home so it was a bit scary being away from her, and in a room with no adults to protect us. We kept calling our mother and asking for water and other things. Finally, I remember our dad telling us that if we didn’t go to sleep a big mosquito would crawl through the keyhole and get us.

I pictured a giant mosquito standing upright like the ones in the old cartoons. It was as big as my dad and climbing through the keyhole one limb at a time. That scared me to death because at the time I didn’t know cartoons were not real. I was quite a bit older before I realized that some things on TV were only make-believe. I remember pulling the covers up around my neck, and the next thing I knew it was morning.

Another time my grandmother told us about her mom having twins. She said they were born too early, and they were very small. They only survived a few days before they died. Their names were Mark and Cora. My grandmother said they were so small they both fit on a pillow and they looked like little dolls lying there. Well, being a child and having the mind of a child, I pictured them actually looking like little toy dolls and that’s how I saw them for years.

As I was thinking about these and other times the visual concept that my mind created of something I was being told about, I thought about the Bible. There are so many things in God’s word that we can only imagine as we read. There are things that happened in places we have never seen, and almost as far back as six thousand years. Then there are the things God says will happen in the future. There’s the resurrection, heaven, and the new earth. These things are so far beyond our imagination that anything our simple minds can come up with can’t even be close to what it will actually be like. Look what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:9

1 Corinthians 2:9 
9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

Now take a look at what God says in Isaiah 55:8-9.

Isaiah 55:8-9 
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Compared to the intelligence of God, the creator of everything that has, or ever will exist, the smartest of us are only children in intellect. There’s no way we can completely understand all these things right now. Like the song says, we can only imagine.

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